Among the many unpublished fragments with paintings and drawings that have come to light in the rubble heaps of Fustat is a small coloured drawing in the Keir Collection1 (Fig. 1).
It shows the figure of a man carrying a heavy bundle or sack thrown over his shoulder which he holds with his right hand while carrying a cresset lamp in his left.
He is accompanied by his dog who is prancing ahead at a lively pace.
The drawing is executed in a thick black line with some carelessly applied colour, red and ochre-yellow,
on a square (87 per 87 mm) of fairly thin, smooth, grey paper.
The paper has been folded at the center, both vertically and horizontally, which undoubtedly accounts for the loss of a chunk in the center.
The paper is torn irregularly almost all around the edges. On the reverse there are a few lines of text which have almost entirely faded away.
The drawing may well been an illustration in a manuscript, and what remains is still enough to allow an assessment of the type and quality of work,
and a possible attribution to a genre and to a time and place.
The most striking elements of this small drawing is surely its subject matter, although its distinct manner of representation —
basically simple in technique yet with great immediacy of impact — merits equal attention.
Source: pp. 147-148, Grube, Ernst J. “A COLOURED DRAWING OF THE FATIMID PERIOD IN THE KEIR COLLECTION.” Rivista Degli Studi Orientali, vol. 59, no. 1/4, 1985, pp. 147–174.